This Could Have Been an Email: The Financial and Operational Costs of Meetings

Joan Burge explores ways in which Assistants can help executives protect their time and energy

How many meetings are sitting on your executive’s calendar this week? How many of them need to be there?

One of the most expensive resources in an organization is often committed with remarkably little scrutiny: people’s time. A one-hour meeting is rarely a one-hour expense. If eight people attend, the organization has invested eight working hours, before accounting for preparation, follow-up, travel between locations, or the time it takes people to regain their concentration afterward. Add several senior leaders to the invitation, and the financial cost rises quickly.

But salary cost is only part of the equation. There is also an operational cost. What work stopped while those people were meeting? What decision was delayed? What customer waited? What strategic thinking did not happen? What happened to the executive who moved directly from that meeting to the next one, and then the next? This is where you, as an Assistant, have an opportunity to make a significant difference.

You are not simply managing a calendar. You are helping manage one of the organization’s most valuable and finite resources: focused human attention.

Start Seeing Meetings as Investments

A calendar invitation can look harmless. Thirty minutes here. An hour there. A recurring meeting every Tuesday. But multiply the length of the meeting by the number of people attending, and the picture changes. Imagine a weekly one-hour meeting with 10 attendees. That is 10 hours of organizational capacity every week, approximately 40 hours each month. Over a year, that recurring meeting can consume hundreds of hours.

Now ask: What is the organization receiving in return? That does not mean the meeting should automatically be canceled. Some meetings are extremely valuable. The purpose is to start evaluating meetings the way you would evaluate other organizational investments:

• What outcome are we trying to achieve?
• Does this group need to be involved?
• Does everyone need to participate at the same time?
• Could the same outcome be achieved another way?

Research reinforces the need for this scrutiny. Microsoft’s Work Trend Index found that inefficient meetings were employees’ number one reported productivity disruptor, while having too many meetings ranked third. The same research found that 68% of people said they did not have enough uninterrupted focus time during the workday.

Every meeting you place on a calendar occupies more than a block of time. It competes with the concentration people need to solve problems, think strategically, develop ideas, complete complex work, and make thoughtful decisions.

The Cost You Cannot See on the Calendar

There is another cost that cannot easily be calculated in dollars: energy. You have probably seen what happens when an executive spends most of the day moving from meeting to meeting. By late afternoon, the calendar may show that they successfully attended everything scheduled for them. What the calendar does not show is whether they still have the mental capacity to think clearly.

Meetings require people to listen, process information, respond, make decisions, manage interpersonal dynamics, shift among subjects, and frequently absorb new work. A calendar packed with meetings may create the appearance of productivity while quietly reducing a person’s ability to do the deeper work their position requires. As an Assistant, you often see this before anyone else does. You know when your executive is arriving at the fourth meeting of the morning already depleted. You see when preparation is being squeezed into five-minute gaps. You know when important work is being pushed into evenings because the entire workday has been consumed by conversations. That visibility gives you valuable business intelligence. So, what will you do with it?

Challenge the Meeting, Not the Person

One reason unnecessary meetings survive is that people become accustomed to them.

“We always meet on Monday.”

“The whole leadership team has always attended.”

“We need everyone there in case something comes up.”

Those statements describe habits, not necessarily business needs. Challenging meeting culture does not mean becoming the person who refuses every invitation or questions every request. It means developing the confidence and judgment to examine the purpose behind the meeting.

When a meeting request comes in, consider asking:

• What decision needs to be made?
• What outcome should we have when this meeting ends?
• Who genuinely needs to participate in that decision?
• Is discussion required, or is information simply being shared?
• Could the information be communicated in writing?
• Could comments be gathered asynchronously before a smaller group makes the decision?
• Does this need 60 minutes, or could it be accomplished in 25?
• Does this recurring meeting still serve the purpose for which it was created?

With experience and context, you can begin applying this thinking before a meeting ever reaches your executive’s calendar.

Know When a Meeting Adds Value

The goal is not to eliminate meetings. It is to protect the meetings that matter. A meeting usually earns its place on the calendar when real-time interaction improves the outcome. A complex decision may require several perspectives. A sensitive issue may need the nuance of conversation rather than an email thread. Brainstorming may benefit from people building on one another’s ideas. Conflict may need to be resolved face to face. A strategic discussion may require questions, debate, and the ability to explore an issue in depth. Relationships matter, too. Human connection cannot always be reduced to efficiency. There are times when gathering people together builds trust, strengthens a team, creates alignment, or gives people an opportunity to be heard. Those are legitimate returns on the investment.

On the other hand, if the primary purpose is to distribute information, provide a routine status update, confirm something that has essentially already been decided, or read through material everyone could review independently, another communication method may be more effective. An email, Teams or Slack message, shared document, recorded update, project management tool, or brief written summary allows people to absorb information when it fits their workflow rather than requiring 10 people to stop working at precisely the same moment. The important distinction is communication versus collaboration. Not every communication requires a meeting.

You can even conduct a simple meeting audit with your executive. Choose a typical week and categorize meetings as essential, useful, questionable, or unnecessary. Then discuss what you notice. You may discover that the greatest opportunity is not eliminating meetings altogether. It might be reducing a weekly meeting to twice a month, cutting 60 minutes to 30, removing people who do not need to attend, combining two overlapping meetings, or replacing status updates with written reports. Small changes compound. Saving your executive 30 minutes once is helpful. Removing an unnecessary 30-minute recurring meeting from the calendars of eight people creates an entirely different level of value.

Protect the Time You Recover

When you remove a meeting, do not automatically fill the opening with another meeting. Recovered time needs a purpose. Your executive may need uninterrupted time to think, prepare, write, review a proposal, connect with employees, work on strategic priorities, or simply reset before the next demanding conversation. I have long believed that an open space on a calendar does not automatically mean a person is available. White space is valuable.

For executives in particular, thinking is part of the job. If every available minute is treated as an opportunity for another meeting, the organization may unintentionally eliminate the very time its leaders need to lead. Protecting that space requires discipline from both the executive and the Assistant.

Changing Meeting Culture One Calendar at a Time

You may not have the authority to announce a new meeting policy for your organization, but you have more influence than you may realize. Every time you ask about the purpose of a meeting, recommend a shorter time block, protect preparation time, suggest a written update, question an outdated recurring invitation, or help your executive determine who truly needs to attend, you are influencing how the organization uses time. When you help your executive model better meeting behavior, other people notice.

The goal is not to create a meeting-free workplace. Meetings are essential to collaboration, relationships, decision-making, and leadership. The goal is to make meetings intentional.

Before accepting the next calendar invitation as simply another block to fit into an already crowded day, look beyond the calendar. Consider the financial investment, the work being interrupted, and the decision that needs to be made. Take into account the people whose attention is being requested and your executive’s energy. Then ask the question that can change an entire meeting culture: Do we need a meeting to accomplish this? Sometimes the answer will absolutely be yes. And sometimes, it really could have been an email.